By: Lana Munip

The University Libraries will conduct the Ithaka S+R Undergraduate Survey from March 23 to April 20. It’s been four years since we last surveyed our undergraduate population and it will be interesting to see what’s changed.

As before, the sample will include students from all locations with undergraduate populations, including World Campus. At some campuses, the entire undergraduate population will be invited to participate. (These include Beaver, Brandywine, DuBois, Fayette, Greater Allegheny, Hazleton, Lehigh Valley, Mont Alto, New Kensington, Schuylkill, Shenango, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, York.)

The survey will cover the following areas:
1) coursework, academics, and information practices;
2) perceptions of the role of the library;
3) library space planning;
4) extra- and co-curricular activities; and
5) interest in and opportunities for conducting or contributing to original research.

As an incentive to participate, students who complete the survey will have the chance to enter a drawing for one of 10 $100 Amazon gift cards. Our office is working with Public Relations and
Marketing to promote the survey widely. We’ll share more news about this closer to the date.

The Libraries will receive a summary report of findings from Ithaka S+R approximately three weeks after the survey closes, after which visualizations of the data will be created, similar to the 2019 Graduate and 2018 Faculty Surveys. These visualizations will be filterable to the campus library level. Additional analysis of the data will take place in summer.

If you have any questions about the survey, please contact Lana Munip, lana@psu.edu or 814-863-1939. If you want to see the visualizations from our earlier surveys, please go to:
https://staff.libraries.psu.edu/assessment and follow the links in the left side bar.